Slayer Tales
by WitchGirl
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Buffy Summers watches as a blue box appears in the middle of a cemetery during her patrol. After trying to kill its occupant, she eventually learns more from him about herself than either of them realize.


Slayer Tales

**Summary:** Seventeen-year-old Buffy Summers watches as a blue box appears in the middle of a cemetery during her patrol. After trying to kill its occupant, she eventually learns more from him about herself than either of them realize.

**Timeline:** Doctor Who: End of Season Four (after "Planet of the Dead"). Hints at spoilers, but nothing overt. Buffy: End of Season Two (after "Go Fish"). Spoilers for all seasons, though.

* * *

Despite the fact that I am brilliant, there are several things the TARDIS knows that I do not. That's why when I generally aim for a very precise point in time and space, it can occasionally send me widely off-course. It knows that I am needed there, even if I don't know what for.

Interestingly enough, that is _not_ the reason I landed in Sunnydale, California in 1998.

I stepped out of the TARDIS to find myself surrounded by weathered granite gravestones in a grassy cemetery somewhere in the middle of the night. Grinning smugly to myself (please do not get the wrong impression—if you knew me, you'd know I have every right to be smug), I stepped out onto the grass and looked around. Seeing no gate, I walked around the TARDIS and straightened my back at the pleasantly surprising sight of a blonde teenage girl sitting on a headstone with one eyebrow cocked. Her arms were crossed, and one hand held something small and wooden.

"Hallo," I said cheerily, then squinted. "Hm, you're certainly not dressed for the 1770s, are you?"

"You have a funny coffin for a vampire," she returned, her voice a very disinterested monotone.

I blinked. "I'm sorry, funny what for a what?"

She puckered her lips, sizing me up, then hopped off the gravestone, her eyes narrowing. "OK, fess up. You're clearly workin' some powerful mojo here. If you're a vamp, where'd you get a thing like that, and if you're not a vamp… then what are you doing in my town?"

"Your town?" I had to say, I was mildly amused and bemused all at once. I mused on the situation, thus covering all possible "muse" verbs. "This'll sound stupid, but this is Sundale, Virginia, am I right?"

"You're right," she conceded. I sighed with relief, glad I'd gotten something right, and then she added, "That did sound stupid."

The cogs in my mind churned away. If I wasn't in Virginia, and it wasn't 1778, then either the TARDIS brought me here on purpose, or I punched in the numbers wrong. "Hold on. Why are you looking for vampires?"

Meanwhile, as I had been trying to work out where I was and why, the girl had begun to circle me. Her fingers tightened around the wooden object. "Nuh uh. Funny box that just appears out of nowhere? No vampire would waste his time with that."

"Oi!" I protested. "Wasting time in the TARDIS, watch your mouth!" I stroked the side of my blue police box. "There, there, old girl, she didn't mean it." I turned back to the teenager who continued to circle, vulture-like in her black leather jacket. "Sorry to interrupt your scrutiny, but could you tell me where I am, please?"

She shrugged, seeming to decide something. "Well, I don't know what you are, but I'm guessing that nothing that magically appears in a cemetery during a patrol is a good thing, so time for you to go dead."

The next thing I knew, I was on my back with a feisty blonde on top of me holding a pointed stick over my chest—and not in the good way! Thankfully, with my keen reflexes, I was able to catch her wrist before she plunged the thing into my chest.

"What are you trying to do, stake me?" I struggled to get out.

"I'm finding out if you're a vampire," she returned. "This is an easy test."

"I'm not a vampire! Can we deal with this like two civilized people?"

She dropped the stake, but wouldn't get off me. "People meaning human?"

I hesitated. "For the sake of argument, say I wasn't human—"

But I was suddenly cut off by a lack of oxygen to my mouth. Her hands gripped my throat as she stared at me mercilessly. "Good… guy!" I managed to choke out, pointing to myself.

She released her grip and glared at me. "Sorry. I'm having trouble trusting nonhumans these days. Last time I did that… didn't work out too well."

I rubbed my sore neck and looked up at her, taking her in for the first time. She was a rather petite thing, but clearly had more muscle than meets the eye because she subdued me fairly quickly. Of course, she did have the element of surprise. But there was something else. Something about her face and her story that was poking at my brain.

"You have very sad eyes."

She looked at me as if I'd just said something offensive. "What are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," I said.

"I meant species, not occupation," she snapped.

"I'm a Time Lord," I added.

"What kind of demon is that?" she asked. "I've never heard of it."

"Of course you haven't, because I'm not a demon," I said, becoming exasperated. Leave it to me to find a girl who knows all about vampires and demons, but nothing about aliens and time travel. "I'm from a planet called Gallifrey."

"Where's that?"

"Full of questions, you are!" I cried. "What about my questions? Who are you, where are we, and when is this?"

"Slayer, Sunnydale, 1998."

I blinked. "1998?"

She nodded. "That's right, Time Lord."

"Sunnydale? Close to Sundale, that is, isn't it? Yup, must have typed the name wrong. And 1778 to 1998… hit the nine instead of the seven, bloody hell!" I gasped. "All these brains and I pushed the buttons wrong!"

She seemed confused, but assuaged that I was no threat to her, so she rose to her feet and stared down at me. "What's so interesting about 1778?"

"Nothing really, s'just a great time to visit the American Revolution," I told her honestly. And then, something she said registered. "Slayer…" I tasted the word and it spawned whispers inside my head. But just as soon as it had come, it was gone. "Nice to meet you!" I said brightly.

She looked me up and down. "You're harmless," she decided, then turned around and headed for the gate.

"Em…" I began, holding up a finger, still trying to figure out where I'd heard that word before. "Hold on. Might I ask what a bold young lady such as yourself is doing in a cemetery in the middle of the night?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you?" she tossed over her shoulder. "It starts with an S and ends in an R."

"Well so does snooker player, but you don't see many of them hanging around with the dead." I paused. "Then again…"

She stopped and gave me a very strange expression, with one cocked eyebrow, flared nostrils, and on corner of her lips twitching and she said, "Huh?"

"Snooker," I elaborated. "It's a very popular sport in…"

But she had already started off towards the gate again. I trotted on after her. "Just one moment, might I ask your name?"

"You don't have one," she said snidely. "What makes you think I do?"

"You're human," I said instinctually. "And even if you weren't, nearly every individual in the universe has something personal with which to identify themselves."

"And you're the exception?"

"No. Actually, my name is _very_ personal." I chewed on my lip and rolled the word over again in my head. _Slayer_… couldn't be good, by the sound of it. Not with the chills it inspired, and in general, I'm against slaying of any kind. Was this young girl my enemy? I shook that feeling off. I wouldn't like to be enemies with this teenager. Come to that, I wouldn't like to be enemies with any teenager. Adolescence is another evolutionary universality, and I've yet to meet a single species for which the phase is pleasant. And since the phase is never pleasant, those suffering from it seldom are as well…

We reached the gate and I was still wheeling down that digression before I realized that I had walked right into her.

"Don't make me regret not killing you," the Slayer sighed.

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I bothering you?"

She did nothing but glare.

"It's just…" I tried to examine her. "I've forgotten you, somehow, and that just doesn't happen to me, unless there's a watch involved, and I'm fairly sure there's no watch here, but there's something about you that—"

"Watch out!"

Hands clutched my throat for the second time that evening and I felt two sharp points tear into my neck. For a moment, a hospital surrounded by stars flashed before my vision, but the next thing I knew, someone was hacking, as if they'd just drank a gallon of sour milk.

"Good god, Buffy, you'll screw anything if it follows you home!" someone gagged, but there was mischievous glee in between the spitting and the coughing. I rubbed my neck and recovered as I looked from the girl with the crossbow (Buffy, I gathered) to the doubled-over man in the black jacket.

Wait, crossbow? "Where did you get that?" I asked, pointing at the weapon and scanning her person for impossibly deep pockets.

But she wasn't paying any attention to me. Her chest was heaving up and down, her jaw was set, and those nostrils were flared again. She reminded me of a bull about to charge a matador. Or a mother gollfrag about to spray venom from her nostrils to defend her tentacled young. Whichever metaphor you find more relatable.

My assailant laughed. I had quickly figured out that these two were bitter enemies, but there seemed to be something I didn't know, subtext I couldn't read.

"I heard about what happened to Ms Calendar," he said, with exaggerated sympathy. He held a hand against his chest. "I bet it broke poor old Giles' heart. Did you get the flowers? See, I hope you did, because I know I sent flowers." He paused. "Roses, I think they were."

Her eyes narrowed. For a moment, I was worried that he'd gotten to her. But then, her lips twitched into a wry smile. "You've been hiding lately. Embarrassed about that kiss in the school?"

It seemed petty to me, but it was enough to make him scowl. He quickly recovered. "Biding my time, little lady. You have no idea what's in store for the grand finale." He snorted at her crossbow. "That looks a little heavy for you. What's a little girl like you going to do with a big tool like that?"

She cocked the weapon. "Allow me to demonstrate."

He spread his arms wide. "By all means…" And then, the wrinkles on his forehead vanished and he looked at her with soft, almost sincere brown eyes. "Buffy."

I knew mind games when I saw them, and I'd had enough with petty verbal sparring. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my secret weapon.

"Buffy?" I said loudly, making both of them look at me like they'd forgotten I was there. "Run."

I aimed, and I fired, and then I ran like hell.

I wasn't that surprised when I noticed that Buffy was chasing me, not the other way around. Apparently, she had chosen to ignore my advice, but when the man in black screamed, and she saw me take off, she must have jumped on the bandwagon.

"Where are you going?" she called out to me.

"No idea!" I returned. "But I'm used to a lot of running."

She seized my arm. "Come with me!"

She was running alongside me in no time, and then she was ahead of me, and I followed her into a lovely little house on a street with lush green foliage. If I'd had time to appreciate the quaintness of it, I might have. But I didn't.

She slammed the door behind me and leaned against it. After all that running she was barely winded. But she looked at me with eyes that seemed to be trying to claw their way out of her sockets.

"That was a vampire," I said, forgetting that she probably already knew that.

As punishment for my condescension, she gave me a very irritated roll of the eyes. "Observo, Master of the Obvious, everyone. He's here all week. What did you do to him, by the way?"

"Hm?" I blinked. "Oh!" I reached into my pocket. "Flashed this in his eyes. It's quite painful if you look directly at it."

She was dubious. "And what _is_ that exactly?"

"My Sonic Screwdriver," I said simply.

"Right…"

Awkward silence elbowed its way between us like a slightly overweight man trying to get to a buffet table at a party. Buffy slid to the floor and hugged her knees, and I took a step backwards. Of all the things this teenager had done tonight, this, by far, was the strangest. Mutant strength, speed like Barry Allen, and a vampire nemesis, all of these things were almost normal. But in her own home, she almost looked… scared. Like home was the last place she felt safe.

She didn't say anything. She just stared at the railing of the stairs. I tried to stay out of her line of sight, mostly because it made me uncomfortable.

I didn't like dealing with other people's problems. Mostly because dealing with other people's problems breeds intimacy, and intimacy is something I like to avoid, when I can help it. But whatever problems this girl had, she didn't shed a tear. She didn't whimper, or complain. She just stared. Even in her fear, she was formidable.

That word rang in my head again, _Slayer_, but I couldn't figure out why.

And then, after what felt like the time it takes to stand in line at Disney World, the slightly overweight man pushed his way past us and piled his plate high, leaving me and Buffy alone.

Five words. Just five little words was all she said. "I should have killed him."

I wanted to ask her why. I wanted to ask her about the subtext that I couldn't read. I wanted to ask her so many things, but for once in my life, I kept my mouth shut.

"I can't _believe_ that I still think that maybe…" she began, but cut herself off by furiously shaking her head. "Death is the only way."

"Ironically enough, I find that's rarely the case," I blurted out, as if it were a casual little known fact.

She looked up at me, her expression half scornful, half confused.

I crouched down in front of her and stared at the floor. "Why do you have to kill him?" I looked up at her after I'd asked the question, waiting.

"Vampires are soulless. He has no soul. Ergo, he must be killed."

This simple logic rang a dissonant cord with my pacifist nature. But I have been around for so long and seen so much that I still understood it. I understood something else, too. "And yet, you fell in love with him. How does that work?"

She snapped at me. "I loved—" But just as instantly, she calmed down. "The soul I loved is gone. And I can't get it back. Believe me, I've tried." She heaved a huge sigh, and it sounded as though the dust of crumbled empires was exhaled on her breath. "I can't keep doing this. I want to… leave. Just go as far, far away from this place and everything in it as I possibly can. Change my name. Get a normal job in a faceless industry and… fade into obscurity."

I nodded, slowly. "Obscurity is not as pleasant a place to be as you might think."

"Oh?" she asked. "Are you the expert? Do you vacation there or something?"

I managed a soft smile. "You've never heard of the Time Lords."

She shook her head. "No, I haven't."

"That's how I'm the expert," I explained.

She seemed to understand somehow, without me elaborating. She hugged her knees even tighter. "I fight and I fight and I fight… It makes no difference. There will always be vampires. They'll keep killing, keep coming, keep torturing…"

"As it should be," I said, and she gaped at me. "Buffy, that's how the world keeps itself in balance. That's how these vastly different species can coexist on this spinning blue orb. Without them, there would be too many humans, and without _you_… you in particular… there would be too many of them."

"So you're saying…" she began slowly. "That it's Darwinian?"

I chuckled. "Em… sure, let's just leave it at that."

"I'm one person…" she said. "And I'm just a kid."

"Don't say that," I pleaded. "I know plenty of singular people who made tremendous difference. I knew a girl who brought a man back to life—permanently. I knew a girl who spent a year traveling the world on foot telling a single story that united a whole planet. I knew a girl who saved the entire _universe_—all universes, come to that—by reaching out and touching my hand."

She still didn't look pleased. I've never been good at assuaging fears, generally because I'm far too honest. But reality didn't seem to be what this girl needed. She needed a fairy tale.

So I told her one.

"Centuries from now, the people of earth have this story…" I began. "Just as humans today tell fairy tales about dragons and witches and unicorns. But it's a story of a girl. She couldn't have been much older than you. They say that she was alone in the world for a long time, and yet she had a deep and loving family. Her father was wise, her brother was brave, and her two sisters were magical. They say that this girl and her family saved the world and no one ever noticed."

I'd seemed to have caught Buffy's interest. "Like how?"

"The versions vary," I explained. "Some say that she slayed a multi-headed dragon which burst forth from the body of a king. Others tell of a doorway to another world releasing bloodthirsty demons, and in order to seal it, the hero leapt through it and got lost for a while. Some stories involve a wicked, selfish god. Others talk about golden keys and dark betrayals. One story even talks of a group of three adolescent wizards who battled the hero in the Great Star Wars of Double-Oh-Seven."

"Star Wars?" she cocked an eyebrow.

"_Great_ Star Wars," I corrected. "It's centuries from now, they mix up their mythology."

Buffy giggled. "This girl sounds like she's too good to be true."

"Ah, she probably is. But the point is, after everything, she always came back."

"But what did she come back for?" Buffy asked.

I grinned. "That's the best story of all. The lonely hero, with her dedicated family, drew the axe from the shadows and brought it down on the chains that bound her sisters and set them free. And just like that, she wasn't alone anymore."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Buffy muttered, doubtfully.

I shrugged. "Ah, I don't know," I admitted. "It's just what they say. Kids love it."

She laughed. "Thank you."

I favored her with an enigmatic smile. "For what, exactly?"

"Making up stories to make me feel better." She scoffed. "As if anyone can time travel."

"Oh, so, you can believe in vampires and souls, but not in time travel?"

"You're lucky I believe you're an _alien_," she said with a laugh.

"My goodness, and here I was thinking a girl like you might be a little more open minded!" I cried.

We had a good laugh, which eventually subsided like the tide, and the tone was somber again. "I know what I have to do now."

I nodded, proudly. "Well, I'm afraid to ask… so I won't." I reached out a hand. "Pleasure to meet you, Buffy."

She shook it. "And you, Doctor Time Lord."

"Actually, just 'Doctor' will do nicely, thanks," I said.

"I'll remember that next time, Doctor Time Lord," she returned, getting agilely to her feet.

"Well, I should be off," I said. "I have an ood to visit eventually, or he might telepathically slap me."

Buffy gave me her trademark confused look. "Are you sure we're just from different planets and not different universes?"

"Nope, same universe," I assured her. "Besides, I've already got a blonde in my life in a different universe." I opened the door. "_Au revoir_!"

"_Gazunteit_!" Buffy replied as she closed the door.

I doubt she knew what it meant.

I took the long way back to the cemetery. No sign of her lurky, soulless ex-boyfriend. Hope she learned her lesson with this one and didn't date any other vampires in the future. I don't see that ending well.

The TARDIS was right where I left it, and I whistled as I unlocked the door. For the first time all night, I wasn't thinking of the word _Slayer_, and that is why its meaning only hit me at that precise moment.

Just as the TARDIS was slipping between the cracks in time and space, I remembered the name of the girl in that story I told Buffy.

And I smiled.

Smugly.


End file.
